On Sunday the documentary Louis Theroux: Savile will be broadcast on BBC2.
It’s been a long time coming and it’s very disappointing to note that it is not the swamp-draining exercise which the BBC as a corporate entity should be showing.
Watched @louistheroux's new Saville documentary. It's difficult to watch, compelling and mind blowing. Sunday 9pm BBC2
— The CustardTV (@LukeCustardtv) September 28, 2016
Instead Theroux, who made his film When Louis Met…Jimmy for the BBC in 1999/2000 and stayed in touch with the DJ thereafter, indulges in a bizarre exercise in self-criticism, as though he is personally responsible for Savile escaping justice for his many sexual offences when plainly he is not.
Why has it taken so long for the BBC to air this 75-minute film, which was first conceived many months ago? It’s an interesting question, but one which is unlikely to generate a satisfactory answer. After all, the BBC’s track record of cover-ups, half-truths, back-covering and stonewalling when it comes to Savile is one of the things for which the broadcaster has become famous.
For example Mark Thompson (now New York Times CEO) and Alan Yentob – the two executives who at different times ultimately oversaw Theroux’s original film in their capacity as successive directors of BBC TV – are not interviewed to find out what they knew about Savile and why they didn’t react when Theroux challenged him on camera about his unhealthy interest in children.
Yet anyone who has seen Theroux’s original film – and presumably they did watch it – will remember Savile ducked and weaved most suspiciously instead of answering this question. It’s become one of the best known moments of Theroux’s career.
Thompson might also have been tackled over his handling of the Savile issue in December 2011, when he was the BBC’s chief and Savile had recently died. According to Thompson’s colleague Helen Boaden, Thompson was told by her that the BBC’s Newsnight programme had been investigating Savile’s abuse of young people and he was also told the resulting report had been axed in mysterious circumstances. Days later, the BBC showed tribute programmes praising Savile. Thompson denies responsibility for any of this.
The one person Theroux has put in the firing line in his new film is himself. And, most unusually, he effectively rewrites history by doing so.
He flogs himself for not doing more in response to a woman who approached him after his Savile film was first broadcast in 2000 claiming she had been abused by Savile as a child.
But what doesn’t come through in his film is that he did react: according to the findings of the BBC-commissioned Dame Janet Smith Review into Savile’s relationship with the BBC, published this year, he told his executive producer at the time, David Mortimer, about the complaint. No action was taken but this wasn’t Theroux’s fault. It was the BBC’s responsibility to deal with it. Theroux makes no mention of this in his film.
The BBC would love people to think it is a fearless and tough broadcaster for showing Theroux’s latest project, but in certain key respects it is no such thing. It seems happy for Theroux to shoulder the blame when it is unquestionably guilty of not having done more to investigate Savile itself.
